PYONGYANG: US Vice President Mike pence was scheduled to meet with North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, while in South Korea for the Winter Olympics this month but the North Koreans canceled at the last minute, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

“North Korea dangled a meeting in hopes of the Vice President softening his message, which would have ceded the world stage for their propaganda during the Olympics,” Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, said in a statement.

But after pence condemned North Korean human rights abuses and announced plans for new economic sanctions, “they walked away from a meeting or perhaps they were never sincere about sitting down,” Ayers said.

pence was going to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, and the nominal head of state, Kim Yong Nam, but the North Koreans called off the Feb. 10 meeting two hours before it was set to start, a U.S. official said, confirming a story first reported by the Washington Post.

The encounter would have been the first scheduled between senior officials from the Trump administration and Pyongyang, which are in a standoff over the North’s development of nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States.

“The President made a decision that if they wanted to talk, we would deliver our uncompromising message. If they asked for a meeting, we would meet. He also made clear that until they agreed to complete denuclearization we weren’t going to change any of our positions or negotiate,” Ayers said, echoing comments made by pence since he left the Olympics and other U.S. officials.

“This administration will stand in the way of Kim’s desire to whitewash their murderous regime with nice photo ops at the Olympics. Perhaps that’s why they walked away from a meeting or perhaps they were never sincere about sitting down,” Ayers said in the statement.

South Korea’s presidential Blue House said it had nothing to say on the matter.

pence had criticized Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions and announced the “toughest and most aggressive” sanctions against Pyongyang yet, while also moving to strengthen the U.S. alliance with Japan and South Korea.

Kim Jong Un, through his sister, invited South Korean President Moon Jae-in to Pyongyang to begin talks “soon.”

South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa told lawmakers on Wednesday that talks to improve inter-Korean relations had to go in hand with those linked to denuclearization of the North. Seoul was in close talks and cooperation with Washington regarding engagements with Pyongyang, the minister said.

]]>http://theasianpost.co.uk/north-korea-canceled-planned-meeting-with-mike-pence/feed/0Florida students to march on Washington in call for gun reformhttp://theasianpost.co.uk/florida-students-to-march-on-washington-in-call-for-gun-reform/
http://theasianpost.co.uk/florida-students-to-march-on-washington-in-call-for-gun-reform/#respondMon, 19 Feb 2018 09:54:04 +0000http://theasianpost.co.uk/?p=29558

WASHINGTON: Students who survived a mass shooting at their Florida school on Sunday announced plans to march on Washington in a bid to “shame” politicians into reforming laws that make firearms readily available.

The “March for Our Lives” will take place on March 24, with sister rallies planned across the country, a group of students told US media’ “This Week.”

They pledged to make Wednesday’s slaughter in Parkland, Florida a turning point in America’s deadlocked debate on gun control.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, a troubled former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, confessed to killing 17 people with a legally-purchased AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, the latest such atrocity in a country with more than 30,000 gun-related deaths annually.

Among the students announcing the march was Emma Gonzalez, who captured worldwide attention with a powerful speech in which she assailed President Donald Trump over the multi-million-dollar support his campaign received from the gun lobby.

She vowed Stoneman Douglas would be “the last mass shooting.”

On Sunday, Gonzalez, 18, urged politicians to join a conversation about gun control — citing Trump as well as his fellow Republicans Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Governor Rick Scott.

“We want to give them the opportunity to be on the right side of this,” she said, as she and her four classmates called on students nationwide to help push the message.

Trump will host a “listening session” with high school students and teachers on Wednesday, the White House said in a statement, though it did not specify who would attend the event.

Singling out the links between politicians and the powerful National Rifle Association, Stoneman Douglas student Cameron Kasky said any politician “who is taking money from the NRA is responsible for events like this.”

“This isn’t about the GOP,” he said, referring to the Republican Party. “This isn’t about the Democrats.”

The NRA, a traditional ally of the Republicans who currently control Congress and the White House, defends a literal view of the US Constitution’s 2nd Amendment which promises a right “to keep and bear arms.”

Even after last October’s killing of 58 people by a gunman in Las Vegas who amassed 47 firearms to commit the worst mass shooting in recent US history, legislators accomplished nothing in the way of tighter controls.

Accusing the NRA of “fostering and promoting this gun culture,” Kasky said the students seek “a new normal where there’s a badge of shame on any politician who’s accepting money from the NRA.”

“People keep asking us, what about the Stoneman Douglas shooting is going to be different, because this has happened before and change hasn’t come?” said Kasky.

“This is it,” he continued. “We are going to be marching together as students begging for our lives.”

The students did not indicate how many people they expected to join their rallies.

But their aims won support from Florida Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch, who said they can make a difference.

“After what they saw, the worst things imaginable, they’re not going to just sit back and take it,” he told “This Week.”

“All I’ve heard all week is how frustrated people are with rhetoric. They want action.”

WASHINGTON: Special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for allegedly meddling in the 2016 presidential election, charging them with conspiracy to defraud the United States, the Department of Justice has announced.

In addition, three defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants with aggravated identity theft.

Mueller has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election as well as any connections between Russia and Trump campaign associates.

Beginning as early as 2014, the Russian organization Internet Research Agency began operations to interfere with the US political system, including the 2016 elections, according to the indictment, which was released by Mueller’s office.

The defendants allegedly posed as US persons, created false US personas, and operated social media pages and groups designed to attract US audiences, the indictment reads.

The Internet Research Agency had a “strategic goal to sow discord in the US political system” including the election, according to the indictment.

Russians posted “derogatory information about a number of candidates,” and by mid-2016 they supported Trump and disparaged Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. They bought ads and communicated with “unwitting” people tied to Trump campaign and others to coordinate political activities.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will announce the multiple indictments against Russian nationals and entities Friday afternoon, according to a Justice Department source.

LONDON: Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British think-tank, in an analysis stated that the Pakistan Army under the “Bajwa doctrine” Pakistan appears far more confident than it was when the US threatened then president General (r) Pervez Musharraf and coerced the country into cooperating.

In a report published on Thursday, the RUSI said the US threats are futile as “gone are the days of timidity and scurrying to please the Americans”.

According to the report, the current policy of the army that should not ‘do more’, but rather the world must do more: the “Bajwa doctrine” dominant in Pakistan’s relation to the US. The doctrine projects that “Pakistan is now adamant that the time for American threats and directives is over.”

The report written by Kamal Alam, RUSI’s expert on Pakistan and the Middle East, quoted Milt Bearden, a former station chief in Islamabad, and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, saying Pakistan alone is not responsible for the worsening conflict in Afghanistan.

Even though in Donald Trump’s administration, there is no tolerance for Pakistan, General Bajwa has clearly stated even before Trump’s tweet that the time for Pakistan to do more has come to an end.

Pakistan delivered everything it promised on Afghanistan but the US policy towards Pakistan appeared to be a departure from reality. It further said that Pakistan found new allies in the form of Turkey, China and Japan, whose foreign ministers had made their support for Pakistan’s counter-terrorism effort well known.

“The Pakistani military is fully prepared to face any cuts in US military aid and potential threats of cross-border incursions by American forces and feels its global recognition and reputation of its counter-terror efforts and the military’s role is very different to what it was in 2001,” stated the RUSI report.

US Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis has already said that he is in touch with the Pakistani military, as without them the US forces cannot move their equipment or survive in landlocked Afghanistan.

The report said that as far as US military aid that Pakistan is dependent is concerned, the words of the Pakistani Army’s spokesperson Major-General Asif Ghafoor sums up Pakistan’s perspective, ‘Pakistan never fought for money but for peace’.

Pakistan as a military ally to the US has proved more productive than any of its NATO’s allies, and Pakistan is not losing its importance in the region in the near future, the report concluded.

WASHINGTON: The United States (US) has said the international community has concerns about the government of Pakistan not rectifying deficiencies in the implementation of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism strategies.

In response to a question about a US motion to put Pakistan on a global terrorist financing watch-list with an anti-money laundering monitoring group, US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauret said: “There’s a plenary session that’s planned for that.”

“This is basically the international community has this sort of longstanding, well, concern when it comes to the Government of Pakistan about what we consider to be deficiencies in the implementation of anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism, and other types of issues similar to that.”

The US along with its European allies has put forward a motion to put Pakistan on a global terrorism-financing watch-list with Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

Nauret explained the group is aimed to promote better measures to crack down on counter-terrorism or to work against terrorism and also money laundering as well.

To a question about Pakistan having introduced an ordinance that all individuals or organizations designated as a terrorist by the United Nations will be considered as a terrorist in Pakistan too, she said “I don’t have any information on that.”

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s Adviser for Finance and Economic Affairs Miftah Ismail, told Reuters that the United States and Britain put forward the motion several weeks ago, and later persuaded France and Germany to co-sponsor it.

“We are now working with the U.S., UK, Germany and France for the nomination to be withdrawn,” Ismail said, speaking by telephone from Europe. “We are also quite hopeful that even if the U.S. did not withdraw the nomination we will prevail and not be put on the watch-list.”

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump acted as consoler-in-chief Thursday to a nation despondent over the latest mass shooting of school kids, with an address that aimed to assuage and steer debate away from the fraught question of gun control.

After a day and night of intense debate inside the White House, the 45th president walked into the Diplomatic Reception Room and spoke to a nation grieving “with one heavy heart.”

“We are here for you -whatever you need, whatever we can do, to ease your pain,” Trump said, addressing the families shattered by a gun rampage that killed 17 children and adults.

Trump had agreed to make the address only reluctantly, at the urging of senior aides.

The morning after the shooting, he issued a largely symbolic proclamation, ordering flags to be flown at half-staff at government buildings, military installations and at US embassies overseas.

But in the immediate aftermath on Wednesday, Trump’s absence had been conspicuous.

At almost exactly the time US authorities first confirmed the toll, in the early evening, the White House sent out a message saying the president would not appear again publicly that day.

In an unusual scene, reporters working in the usually heaving White House briefing room walked out the door toward Valentine’s Day appointments they had assumed they would miss.

In similar situations, previous presidents have quickly, within hours, appeared in the room, eager to console or unite.

Barack Obama’s tearful appearance there after 20 elementary school children were murdered at Sandy Hook in 2012, was a seminal moment of his presidency.

“Everyone understood, when something of that magnitude happened that the Americans people expect to hear from the president,” said Obama speechwriter Terry Szuplat, who recalls the 44th president carrying out that duty at least 15 times.

“No one needed to come and tell us to start working, we understood the magnitude of these situations. We knew that at some point, somewhere he would have to come out and speak. It was expected, required and necessary.”

Trump — as ever in his ground-breaking and rule-breaking presidency — initially chose to do things differently. His only comments Wednesday were a pair of tweets offering “prayers and condolences” and saying he spoke to Florida Governor Rick Scott and was “working closely with law enforcement on the terrible Florida school shooting.”

With other questions brewing about Trump’s position on gun control, his alleged affair with a porn star and battery of allegations against a top aide, the White House cancelled its already delayed regular daily briefing.

Inside any White House, there is a delicate conversation about what to say after a mass shooting and how to say it.

“Somehow this has become routine,” Obama admitted in 2015. By the end of his presidency, he had, he said, felt tapped out, unsure what to say and how it could make a difference.

“The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine.”

But according to Szuplat, “there is really only one person who can channel that grief and speak to that grief, and there is only one person who can truly speak for the nation.”

Part of the task is to help bring clarity to a confusing situation, but often the audience is the people directly involved.

“I know from feedback we received on the scene and in the days and months that followed how much it means to these communities to hear directly from the president, to hear that ‘you are not alone,’” Szuplat said.

“They need to know that the entire country stands with them.”

Trump did just that, vowing to visit Florida in the coming days, quoting scripture and declaring “we hold fast to our fellow Americans in their time of sorrow.”

]]>http://theasianpost.co.uk/as-gun-debate-rages-trump-changes-the-subject/feed/0Factbox: Major school shootings in the United Stateshttp://theasianpost.co.uk/factbox-major-school-shootings-in-the-united-states/
http://theasianpost.co.uk/factbox-major-school-shootings-in-the-united-states/#respondThu, 15 Feb 2018 17:21:12 +0000http://theasianpost.co.uk/?p=29341

FLORIDA: A shooter opened fire at a Florida high school on Wednesday, killing 17 people and sending hundreds of students fleeing into the streets before being taken into custody by law enforcement, authorities said.

The bloodshed was the latest outbreak of gun violence that has become a regular occurrence at U.S. schools and colleges.

Below are some of the worst U.S. school shootings in the last 20 years:

BENTON, Kentucky, Jan. 23, 2018 – A 15-year-old boy kills two fellow students, both also 15, at Marshall County High School in western Kentucky with a pistol and wounds 14 others. Four other high schoolers suffered non-gunshot wounds in the ensuing panic.

AZTEC, New Mexico, Dec. 7, 2017 – A 21-year-old man disguised as a student enters the local high school, kills two students and then shoots himself to death.

SAN BERNARDINO, California, April 10, 2017 – A man dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after killing his estranged wife at North Park Elementary School. An 8-year-old student is also shot to death.

ROSEBURG, Oregon, Oct. 1, 2015 – A man opens fire on the campus of Umpqua Community College, killing nine people before he is shot dead by police.

MARYSVILLE, Washington, Oct. 24, 2014 – A freshman at Marysville-Pilchuck High School fatally wounds four students in the cafeteria before killing himself.

SANTA MONICA, California, June 7, 2013 – A onetime digital media student fatally shoots his father and brother, sets their house on fire, and then kills three people at Santa Monica College. The gunman kills himself.

NEWTOWN, Connecticut, Dec. 14, 2012 – A man fatally shoots his mother, then kills 20 children and six adults before killing himself at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

OAKLAND, California, April 2, 2012 – A former nursing student kills seven people and wounds three at Oikos University, a Korean Christian college.

CHARDON, Ohio, Feb. 27, 2012 – Seventeen-year-old student at Chardon High School kills three students and wounds three in school cafeteria.

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama, Feb. 12, 2010 – A biology professor at the University of Alabama at Huntsville opens fire during a staff meeting, killing three faculty members and wounding three.

DEKALB, Illinois, Feb. 14, 2008 – A former graduate student kills five students and wounds 16 at Northern Illinois University before taking his own life.

SHEPHERDSTOWN, West Virginia, Sept. 2, 2006 – A 49-year-old man shoots himself and his two sons to death during a visit to the campus of Shepherd University.

RED LAKE INDIAN RESERVATION, Minnesota, March 21, 2005 – A 16-year-old high school student kills seven people and wounds several others in a shooting rampage after killing two people off-campus. He then kills himself.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis will press European allies on Wednesday to stick to a promise to increase military budgets as the United States offers an increase in its own defense spending in Europe.

For the first time, NATO countries have submitted plans to show how they will reach a target to spend 2 percent of economic output on defense every year by 2024, after Trump threatened to withdraw U.S. support for low-spending allies.

Fifteen of the 28 countries, excluding the United States, now have a strategy to meet a NATO benchmark first agreed in 2014 in response to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region, following years of cuts to European defense budgets.

It is unclear whether that will be enough to impress U.S. President Donald Trump when he attends a NATO summit in July.

While France plans to increase defense spending by more than a third between 2017 and 2025, Spain has said it will not meet the 2024 target, while Belgium and Italy are also lagging.

A multi-billion euro projected increase in Germany will not be enough to take Berlin up to 2 percent by 2024.

Mattis is expected to take a tough stance, according to Katie Wheelbarger, principal U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.

“He will address those who don’t have national plans to meet 2 percent and suggest they really need to develop those plans,” she told reporters.

A Pakistani soldier keeps vigil next to a newly fenced border fencing along Afghan border at Kitton Orchard Post in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal agency.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is pushing for the completion of a fence along its disputed border with Afghanistan – and it wants the U.S. to help pay for it.

Less than 10 percent of the fence planned along the 1,456 miles (2,343 kilometers) of mountainous border with Afghanistan has been completed so far due to financial constraints. Even so, Pakistan Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said the barrier should be finished by the end of 2019.

“It won’t cost them much,” Asif said of the U.S. in an interview on Feb. 2 in Islamabad. “The war is costing them much more.”

Pakistan has come under increasing pressure to act against the Afghan Taliban and affiliated Haqqani network after President Donald Trump accused officials in Islamabad of allowing them safe haven. Last month, Trump suspended about $2 billion worth of military aid to the nuclear-armed nation and accused Pakistan of giving “lies and deceit” in return for years of U.S. funding.

The border fence will stop the flow of militants crossing into both countries unchecked, Asif said, adding that Pakistan also considers the return of more than 2 million Afghan refugees critical for peace. He called on the U.S. to assist with the fencing and repatriation of the Afghan refugees.

“It’s a free for all,” Asif said, adding that as many as 70,000 people crossing the border a day. “These issues are facilitating terrorism.’’

When asked about Trump’s allegations, Asif said that Pakistan wanted better ties with the U.S.

“Both sides are trying to decrease the stress,” he said.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have 235 crossing points, some frequently used by militants and drug traffickers, of which 18 can be accessed by vehicles, according to a report by the Afghanistan Analysts Network research group in October.

Asif said the roughly 600,000 Afghan refugees that went back to their home country last year have largely returned to Pakistan. He said the camps are breeding grounds for insurgency, and the international community must do more to help with the burden and conditions in Afghanistan for returnees.

WASHINGTON: U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered Pentagon and White House officials to begin planning a military parade in Washington similar to the Bastille Day parade he witnessed in Paris in July, the Washington Post reported.

At a meeting at the Pentagon on Jan. 18 that included Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Joseph Dunford, Trump said he wanted a military parade, the Post reported, citing a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” the military official said, according to the Post. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military,” the official added.

After the Post published its story, the White House issued a statement that said Trump “has asked the Department of Defense to explore a celebration at which all Americans can show their appreciation.”

A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the parade planning was in the “brainstorming” stage and nothing had been decided, the Post reported.

The Pentagon was aware of a request for a parade but was only just starting to explore possibilities, including on timing, a Pentagon spokesman told Reuters.

Trump has said he was impressed by the military parade he watched in Paris on July 14. U.S. and French soldiers marched together to mark 100 years since the United States entered World War One and France’s annual Bastille Day holiday. It included tanks, armored vehicles and a flyover of U.S. and French military jets.